is that the Prophet ﷺ preferred the congregational prayer to the prayer of the lone worshipper, yet he never said that the individual’s prayer is invalid. We have also preserved accounts of men who were with him, missed the prayer, and, with his knowledge, performed it individually even though they could have formed a congregation; and of others who missed the congregational prayer, then came to the mosque and each performed it alone, although they too could have assembled and prayed together in the mosque. They refrained only because they disliked establishing two congregations in one mosque.”

The report that al-Shafiʿi cited from the Companions has in fact reached us with a continuous chain from al-Hasan al-Basri, who said, “Whenever the Companions of Muhammad ﷺ entered a mosque in which the prayer had already been performed, they would pray individually.” Reported by Ibn Abī Shaybah, 2/223.

Abū Ḥanīfah said, “It is not permissible to repeat a congregational prayer in a mosque that has a resident imam.” A similar statement is found in al-Mudawwanah from Imam Mālik.

In short, the majority of scholars regard the repetition of a congregation in a mosque—under the previously mentioned condition—as disliked, and this is the correct view. Nor is it contradicted by the well-known hadith, “Will no one show charity to this man by praying with him?” which will be cited later in the book (p. 277). That narration merely records the Messenger ﷺ urging someone who had already prayed with him in the first congregation to accompany the late-comer in a voluntary prayer; it is thus a supererogatory worshipper praying behind one performing an obligatory prayer. Our discussion, by contrast, concerns obligatory worshippers praying behind other obligatory worshippers who missed the first congregation. The two situations cannot be analogized, for the analogy fails on several counts:

First: the disputed case was never transmitted from the Prophet ﷺ—neither as an explicit permission nor by tacit approval—despite the fact that the circumstance existed in his lifetime, as the report of al-Hasan al-Basri shows.